Latest FX News

Sources familiar with the matter say that BGC Partners has promoted three executives in London and New York.
Anthony Warner will be promoted from senior managing director and general manager, UK and Middle East to executive managing director, and see his responsibilities expanded to include BGC’s European commodities business.
Meanwhile in the US Shawn McLoughlin will be promoted from director of new business development, North America to executive managing director and co-CEO of BGC Financial.
Also in New York senior managing director of BGC Partners, Robert Miller’s mandate will be expanded to include responsibility for the firm’s credit business in the US.

The recent cuts announced at Standard Chartered are beginning to hit its FX department, with at least three senior staff thought to be leaving the bank.
In New York, Profit & Loss understands that Sebastian Correa, head of FX, rates and credit trading, Americas, and Jonathan Comings, who worked in FX sales, are leaving the bank as part of the cuts.
Correa joined StanChart in 2010 as head of trading, Latin America, before moving to his most recent role in 2015. Prior to joining StanChart, he spent six years at Banco Santander and four years at Citi, where he was based in Bogota.

Martin O’Donoghue, who recently left his position as head of spot FX at Credit Suisse, is set to join Morgan Stanley in London, according to market sources.
Although a spokesperson for Morgan Stanley declines to comment on the appointment and Donoghue’s title there is not yet known, sources say that he is joining the American bank in early 2017.
O’Donoghue left Credit Suisse, where he was also based in London, after seven years with the bank. Prior to that, he ran the spot desk at Bank of America

Macquarie Bank says it is merging two of its three capital markets facing businesses: Macquarie Securities Group (MSG) and the Commodities and Financial Markets Group (CFM).
The bank says that CFM group head, Andrew Downe, will become group head of the newly formed Commodities and Global Markets Group (CGM). MSG Head, Stevan Vrcelj, will step down from his current role and from the executive committee but will assist Downe with the integration of the two groups over the coming months.

The National Futures Association (NFA) has submitted a proposed rule to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that will raise transparency levels for retail FX customers when executing in markets.
The proposed rule change, which has the support of the five Forex Dealer Members (FDMs) under the NFA jurisdiction, will provide retail FX customers with a framework for obtaining execution information to review the quality of the execution the customer received compared to that of other customers at the FDM.
Specifically, the rule states that an FDM will be required, upon the request of a customer regarding a specific executed FX transaction, to provide the customer with specified transaction data for the 15 transactions in the same currency pair that occurred immediately before and after the customer's transaction.

Jodi Burns is leaving her position as global head of regulation and post-trade, FX, at Thomson Reuters in New York.
A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters confirmed Burns’ departure, although did not indicate if a replacement has been appointed. Burns also represented Thomson Reuters as a board member of the Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA).
Burns joined Thomson Reuters as part of its acquisition of FXall, where she had been hired shortly before the deal was announced in July 2012. At FXall, Burns was senior director, head of market analysis and development.

Invast Global, an Australian-based non-bank prime services brokerage, has announced a deal with XTX Markets that will allow its clients to access XTX’s liquidity via its multi-asset prime services facility, PurePrime.
Invast claims that the partnership illustrates the rapidly growing stature of non-bank participants in the financial markets as banks continue to feel the effects of increasing regulatory constraints.
The firm says that this tie-up with XTX follows growing global demand for the PurePrime facility, which offers FX and CFD liquidity via multiple trading GUIs or APIs, backed by what it says are three tier-one prime brokers.

Calypso Technology has become the first firm to partner with R3 to develop capital markets applications on its Corda distributed ledger-based smart contract platform.
The two firms are currently developing a multi-party trade confirmation solution and testing it with multiple financial institutions.
R3’s Corda – which will be open-sourced globally on November 30 – is designed to be an open and inclusive smart contract platform that enables third party providers and partners to build and operate distributed ledger applications using common code and protocols to ensure interoperability.

Portware upgraded its execution management system (EMS), Portware Enterprise.
Portware Enterprise is designed as a customisable EMS that acts as a central platform for the creation and execution of trading strategies for global equities, futures, options, fixed income and FX.
The firm says that the latest version, Portware Enterprise 6.4, focuses on assisting traders in managing regulatory and administrative burdens, while freeing up their time to concentrate on preserving alpha with “state-of-the-art”, AI-driven tools.
The EMS is designed to offer users data warehouse functionality, advanced venue analysis and an enhanced ability to record and analyse growing volumes of execution and Indication of Interest (IOI) data.

US-based technology firm ThinkLiquidity has launched a transaction scoring system featured in its new Web application QuantView.
The patent pending system delivers performance metrics on trades conducted over electronic trading platforms. The firm says QuantView data can be used by trade desks and risk managers to quickly and accurately assess order flow and improve risk management.
“There’s no other product available that makes it so easy to see key trading metrics on both a micro and macro level,” claims ThinkLiquidity’s managing director Jeff Wilkins.